Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): I welcome, via StarLeaf, departmental officials Deborah Brown, director of the justice delivery directorate; David Lennox, deputy director of the corporate engagement and communications division; and Paul Bullick from the victims' payment project. You are welcome to the meeting. The meeting will be reported by Hansard, and a transcript will be published on the Committee's web page. Deborah, I will hand over to you for an overview of progress on the scheme.

Ms Deborah Brown (Department of Justice): Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to brief the Committee on the progress that is being made in implementing the victims' payment scheme. I apologise for the fact that you received the paper only yesterday, but I hope that you have had time to consider it.

We welcome the opportunity to provide the Committee with an update on the progress that has been made following the designation of the Department, on 24 August, to administer the victims' payment scheme. A project has been established, and I am the senior responsible owner (SRO). I am joined today by David Lennox, head of the corporate engagement and communications division, which also has responsibility for compensation services. David is the project director for the administration of the victims' payment scheme. I am joined also by Paul Bullick, the project manager for the scheme and the previous head of compensation services. The Department of Justice is fully committed to the delivery of the scheme, and our Minister has made clear that we must ensure that we meet the needs of victims and survivors.

Before I turn to the detail on the implementation of the scheme, I will address specific issues that have been highlighted by the Committee.

The Committee has asked why a response was not expected to correspondence of 18 February 2020 from the permanent secretary to David Sterling, head of the Civil Service. That relates to a period when discussions were ongoing about the designation of a Department to deliver the victims' payment scheme. The purpose of the permanent secretary's note was to offer views about designation in advance of a planned discussion that would be led by David Sterling and involve various Departments. TEO was considering a range of implementation issues relating to the scheme, and the intention was to ensure that those discussions were fully informed. The permanent secretary subsequently attended a meeting on 21 February, which was convened by David Sterling and involved the permanent secretaries from the Department for Communities and the Department of Finance, as well as senior TEO officials. The purpose of the meeting was to inform TEO's consideration of the designation of a Department, so a response to the correspondence of 18 February was not required.

In relation to the query about the correspondence from our Minister and the First Minister and the deputy First Minister, a response had not been received at the time of writing to the Committee. However, a response from the First Minister and the deputy First Minister was received on 21 August, asking our Minister whether she was content for the Department to be designated. We can arrange to forward a copy of that correspondence to you if you would find it helpful.

I will now turn to our update on the progress that has been made on implementing the victims' payment scheme. I will also seek to address the specific issues that have been raised by the Committee. As you have noted, on 24 August, the Executive Office designated the Department of Justice as the Department to exercise the administrative functions of the victims' payments board on the board's behalf under paragraph 2 of schedule 1 to the Victims' Payments Regulations 2020. Prior to that, as you are aware, the Minister had volunteered for the Department to be designated on the basis that victims should not have to endure any further unnecessary delay.

Following an allocation of £2·5 million in the June monitoring round by the Executive to TEO, it was agreed by TEO to provide grants to the Department of Justice to establish the administrative arrangements for the scheme. That funding has been made available for this financial year, and it has allowed progress to be made on a range of issues, including the recruitment of the board members, other steps that are needed to establish the victims' payments board and the IT developments. The Minister has indicated to the Assembly that her aim is for the scheme to open to applications in early March. Work is under way in order to meet that timescale. However, as I know you will appreciate, a substantial amount of work needs to be done to implement the scheme. It is a complex area with a magnitude of work to be done, and, of course, there are unknowns around COVID and how that might have an impact on delivery over the coming months.

The key elements include the appointment of members to the victims' board by the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission (NIJAC) and the induction of those new members; the development of the administrative processes for considering claims and communicating with the applicants; the finalisation of an IT system and its security accreditation; the appointment of a medical assessment service provider; the development of an assessment process; and related staffing and training arrangements. We also need to ensure that the victims' payments board agrees its governance and decision-making policies, including those for the exercise of discretion, as well as service-level agreements with those who provide evidence. There is the identification and training of staff, the securing of accommodation and the development of a website and a communications strategy.

I will expand a little more on those issues. First, the development and implementation of an IT solution to support the administration of the scheme is a critical work stream. The discovery stage for the IT solution commenced last week and will include exploring ways of accepting and tracking applications as quickly as possible.

Officials are liaising with NIJAC on the details that are required for job descriptions, terms and conditions and numbers and complement for the appointment of members to the victims' payments board. The victims' payments board needs to be established to make decisions on the application form. That, in turn, informs the workflow processes and IT system that will support the delivery of the new scheme, manage the administrative processes and ensure that the board has access to accurate and appropriate information to make informed decisions on payments.

In anticipation of the formal appointment of a president of the board, the Lord Chief Justice has, very helpfully, made a judge available to inform the development of the scheme. Work has also been ongoing to seek to establish a medical assessment service and, together with TEO officials, there has been engagement with a potential assessment service provider on the design and development of an assessment methodology. DOJ and TEO officials also continue to engage with all relevant bodies to scope out the processes for evidence gathering and sharing information to inform the assessment of applications. That includes the drafting of evidence-gathering protocols, service-level agreements and information-sharing agreements for consideration by the board.

An important aspect of the project is the engagement with the victims and survivors' representatives. Officials have already had a number of meetings with the sectoral representative group, and those discussions will continue on a fortnightly basis for the foreseeable future. That is to ensure that the sector is kept fully informed of developments and has the opportunity to put views forward as implementation progresses.

A communications strategy is also being developed to ensure that all stakeholders are kept fully informed. We also need to ensure due diligence and that everything is done correctly, that personal details are protected and that there are no issues with making payments at the end of the process.

One issue that has been raised with us is the timescale for payments being made to victims. That will depend on how quickly all the necessary evidence can be gathered to enable a proper assessment of an application. Officials have been engaging with PSNI, the Public Record Office and the Department of Health regarding evidence and information retrieval. It will also be a matter for the victims' payments board to confirm arrangements and timescales for making payments.

Another significant challenge that will need to be resolved to successfully deliver the scheme is to secure adequate funding for the duration of the scheme. In accordance with normal government budgeting arrangements, TEO has indicated that it will make a request for the necessary funding set out in paragraph 9 of schedule 1 to the regulations with the Department of Finance as the funding is due. The Minister has publicly stated that funding for the scheme should be provided by the UK Government and has committed to working with Executive colleagues to help secure that funding. Last week, our Minister met the First Minister, the deputy First Minister and the Finance Minister to discuss how additional funds could be secured. It was agreed that the four Ministers will seek a meeting with the Secretary of State accordingly.

It is difficult to estimate the cost of the scheme with any precision, given the uncertainty over the number of eligible applicants who may come forward and, in particular, the numbers with psychological injuries and the extent of those injuries. TEO officials are taking forward detailed scoping work on the potential number of applicants to the scheme, which, in turn, will inform any request for funding. As I mentioned, work is ongoing on scoping the staffing requirements to support the victims' payments board. The number of staff will be largely informed by the potential number of applicants to the scheme. Any staff recruitment will be in line with Northern Ireland Civil Service recruitment policies.

Work is also ongoing to identify suitable accommodation for the board and the administrative support staff. While further work is required, good progress has been made on identifying an option for accommodation.

I trust that that gives you a sense of the work ongoing to implement the victims' payment scheme. It is a complex scheme, with numerous interdependencies and many operational challenges to address, but we are committed to the delivery of the scheme and the opening of applications as planned. Although there is no clarity at present on the longer-term funding, I assure the Committee that it is not delaying the work being advanced by the Department to prepare for implementation of the new scheme.

I trust that that is helpful. We are happy to take any questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Thank you very much. That is helpful. Let me kick off straight away with a couple of questions. You mentioned that a judge has been made available to assist with this. Do we know who that judge is? Can you tell us?

Mr David Lennox (Department of Justice): Yes. We have been made aware. I suppose that making that announcement is a matter for the Lord Chief Justice, and I suspect that he will do so in due course. It is probably more appropriate that he conveys who the judge is in case that position might change.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): I will be keen to know who that is.

You said that the IT requirements were critical. Does the project require the establishment of a new IT system? Or, are there existing systems in place that are being utilised or adapted?

Ms Brown: It is a new IT system. TEO has been engaging with the Department since October. It has taken a look at the compensation services' system to see how it was constructed. We have been working closely alongside that. I will let Paul Bullick say a bit more about the nature of the IT system.

Mr Paul Bullick (Department of Justice): Thanks, Deborah. Over the past number of months, we have been engaging with TEO and the IT developer. The project team has two designated product owners from compensation services that were involved in the design and delivery of its new IT system. It is understood that there will be some form of reuse of the compensation services' system, but they will maybe take a side copy of it, so that it will not impact on our business or IT operating requirements. Hopefully, there will be some reuse, because some of the workflow processes for receiving and dealing with applications are broadly similar. Although it is a new system, we hope that we will get some reuse of our recently developed system for compensation services.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Will a specific approach be taken to when applications will be dealt with? Will they be dealt with in chronological order, according to when the victim was injured, or will victims who may, regrettably, be nearing end of life be prioritised? Has that been taken into account?

Ms Brown: That will be an issue for the board, but we will provide options on how that might be taken forward. That will be part of the process that we are laying out.

Mr Bullick: There are circumstances that we could consider, such as victims who have a terminal illness or their age profile. We will be discussing that with the president and board members to get agreement on the best way forward to prioritise applications.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Is £2·5 million sufficient to get the project up and running? Is there any indication of what the ongoing administration costs might be once the scheme is established?

Ms Brown: At this stage, we have put a number of staff into the implementation team, and we are working up the requirements for that, moving forward. As part of the process, the implementation team will look at the staffing requirements for the administration of the scheme. We are working on those at the moment; that is the nature of some of our project's objectives. Our initial scoping of the costs in this current financial year indicates that £2·5 million will be sufficient to cover the costs incurred by DOJ and TEO.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): You have identified preferred accommodation. Is that correct?

Ms Brown: Yes, and we are working through some of our requirements for that accommodation. We hope that we will secure and have it available in the next number of months.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Is there one issue that you regard as being the biggest risk to you not delivering this in the indicated time frame of March?

Ms Brown: There are a number of interdependencies within the programme timeline, as we outlined in our opening remarks. We need the board to be in place to help to inform the processes, which, in turn, will influence the nature of the design of the IT system. All those are interconnected, and, if one slips, it will have a knock-on effect on another. Based on the assumptions that we have made, we should be able to open for applications at the start of March. However, in the current COVID climate, it is difficult to know what implications might arise that could cause delays. Of course, we are making sure that we are ready to work remotely and to have all the systems in place to do so.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Thank you for your answers to my questions.

Ms Dillon: Thank you very much, Deborah, and your officials, for coming to the Committee. It is quite early in the process, so this probably was not the right time, but, at some stage, I would like the Minister to come to the Committee to discuss the issue.

I have a couple of questions. Have the criteria for the board been decided upon, Deborah?

Ms Brown: With regard to the board, David has been working very closely with NIJAC on job descriptions. I will let him say a bit more about that.

Mr Lennox: That work is well advanced. Hopefully, over the next week or so, we will try to settle on job descriptions and terms and conditions. The panel members are made up of medical, legal and ordinary members. If we can get those signed off over the next week or two, that then allows NIJAC to proceed to make the appointments. They are nearly there. We just have to finalise a few details. We have a meeting scheduled later this week with the victims' sector group. We hope to share the job descriptions with them, all being well — if not this week, certainly, shortly thereafter.

Ms Dillon: I am glad to hear that it will be shared with the groups. I would like to think that any issues that they have with it will be taken on board, rather than them being shown it and told, "That is what it is. There you go". As we fought for with historical institutional abuse, there should be co-design with the groups and victims themselves.

You mentioned the medical assessment service and that there have been conversations about who might do that. As we know, there are major issues with medical assessment services for current benefits, such as the personal independence payment (PIP) and the employment and support allowance. I know that there are very different but equally concerning issues with the police injury on duty scheme. Therefore, it is a vital element. It is not built into other assessments that medical records are requested automatically. Generally, that causes a lot of issues, because what happens is that the Department and medical assessment services say that they do not request the records, so the person then has to do that themselves, and GPs say that they cannot do it or that the person will have to pay for it. Something needs to be put in place to ensure that medical records are requested because they are a vital component.

Will the medical assessment services have specific expertise to deal with post-traumatic stress? A decision has been taken that psychological injury will be included. The level of psychological injury has been reduced dramatically by the British Government. How will psychological injury be assessed? Again, I know from dealing with other benefits and the medical assessment services that, when it comes to any type of mental health issue, they have a very poor record. People will, potentially, be severely psychologically damaged and will have very specific issues, the impact of which, if you did not understand what they had been through, you could find it difficult to assess. That could create major issues on the road ahead. We could come up against real complications there. It is important to get that right.

My last point, to be fair, is one for the Justice Minister. I think that I will hold back and put it to the Minister herself. I do not think that it is one for you. I would be happy enough to get responses to those questions for now.

Ms Brown: On the issue of the medical assessments, of course, we are engaging with a potential medical assessor at the moment through TEO. We are trying to learn lessons from previous schemes to ensure that we manage some of the issues that you raised and that they cannot reoccur. Of course, again, we will look at certain specific expertise and ensure that the medical assessor can provide that. I will ask David to say a bit on that. He has been engaging with TEO over the past week on the medical assessment.

Mr Lennox: We are aware of concerns around the medical assessment process and that service, as is TEO. We are keen that we learn as much as we can from previous experiences. One user of those services has been the Department for Communities, and we have already engaged with it to pick up whatever learning we can from its experiences. Deborah's point is well made.

We have had a workshop with the potential provider, and another is arranged. This is probably a bit different from what they are used to, so that has to be worked through as part of the process as we scope out the service.

We can take away your point about medical records and have a look at that as part of the design process. We are in the design stage, so we have the opportunity to shape some of this. I do not know what is feasible, but we are happy to take that into consideration.

Ms Dillon: A number of groups already have services in place to help with benefits for those who use their organisation. They, too, would be a useful tool to you in designing this in a way that will really work for everybody. I genuinely mean that — that it will not allow those who are trying to claim and should not be eligible to slip through but will equally ensure that those who have difficulties in explaining their issues will be supported properly through the process.

Mr Lennox: TEO is engaging, as part of that service, so that victims' groups, and probably victims as well, will get support when they are making applications. That is part of TEO, which will commission that because it has the policy lead in that area.

Mr Dunne: Thanks, Deborah, and your staff, for updating us.

It is a multimillion-pound scheme, and, obviously, the cost will escalate as time goes on. Can you give us an assurance that proper project management principles are in place? I am thinking of approval stage processes as the project advances. There also needs to be audit and evaluation. Those types of principles are key. I would like an assurance that they will be in place.

From our experience over the years in the Assembly —.

Ms Brown: I am sorry, you are breaking up and we cannot hear you clearly. Would you mind repeating that?

Mr Dunne: I am looking for assurance that a project management scheme is in place to manage the project, which is a multimillion-pound scheme. They have said that the cost will escalate as time goes on. I am looking for an assurance that those principles are there in relation to the design, the approval stages, and audit, evaluation and management review. All those good principles should be in place. Can you give us an assurance that that will be the case?

Ms Brown: We have established our own project for implementing the administration of the scheme. We have our project board, our project initiation document, our risk register and our list of tasks that have to be done at certain points, and we will keep that under regular review. We have those governance structures in place.

TEO has an oversight group, which involves it, us and key stakeholders, that looks at the umbrella level. TEO is responsible for the business case and associated approvals; that is the business case for the £2·5 million and the business case for the wider scheme. TEO is working through both of those business cases, the larger one being about the payments.

The big issue at the moment is scoping the level of funding that will be required over the period of the scheme, which will be dependent on the number of applicants. That business case should give us a range, and that will allow the bid to be placed with the Treasury for the amount that is needed. The spending review is the opportunity to get that in at this point and give certainty over the next number of years.

There is a high level of uncertainty around how many applications will come forward, at what stage and how long each application will take to be assessed, given that there will be different levels of complexity.

Within that, we will keep the spend of the scheme under scrutiny and report to TEO any variations against the budget and use the in-year monitoring round to secure any additional funding or to surrender should that be the case.

Mr Dunne: Obviously, there is a risk where you have two bodies, the Department of Justice and the Executive Office, working. Can you give us some assurance that the risks can be managed and that there should not be problems about responsibilities? That is one of the issues. Who is responsible clearly needs to be defined and to be monitored and probably audited.

Ms Brown: There is a draft memorandum of understanding between TEO and the DOJ. That will clearly set out all the roles and responsibilities. The TEO oversight group has a risk register with clearly outlined responsibilities. We in the DOJ have our risk register drafted, and we had our first project board last week. We will keep those under review. As you say, we will be very clear on where each of those relevant risks lie and who we are dependent upon for delivery.

Mr Dunne: Chair, I have one more quick point. Are the relatives of deceased victims able to make a claim?

Ms Brown: Yes, they are. That is allowed for in the regulations.

Mr Dunne: What sort of evidence do they need? Obviously, the medical issue was well discussed, and it was agreed totally that we need clarification about who actually gets it. Quickly on that point about the relatives, I suppose that is a bit of grey area, on thinking about it. Have you any thoughts about what sort of evidence is needed?

Mr Bullick: That is something that has to be worked through. Different types of evidence might be available, and I think that that will make up some of the complexity of some of these cases, particularly some of the more historical ones in terms of the level of evidence that might be available. I think that what the board will consider appropriate evidence is part of the process that will be worked through with it. It might well be that in places that could be limited. I think that there will be some guidance on what we would expect or what the board might expect to see coming forward. It obviously has discretion in individual cases.

Mr Beattie: Thank you for the evidence. It is really useful to dig into this slightly. You mentioned that the scheme should be up and running for applications in early March. What is your assessment, if that is the case, of when the first payment is likely to be made? I am asking for an assessment; you will not be held to this. [Laughter.]

Ms Brown: There is a process to go through, which is established in the eligibility for a payment in the first instance, then the medical assessments etc have to be done and the role of the panel and its deliberations have to be considered. It is really difficult to assess. We can maybe go by some of the timelines that we have for some of the compensation claims, but I suppose that it will probably be towards of the next financial year before payments might start to go out. Again, it is dependent on how quickly applications come in and the time that is needed to assess them. I do not know if you want to say anything more, Paul, based on your experience.

Mr Bullick: Deborah referenced compensation services. This is a very similar process whereby we receive an application and assess it to see whether all the mandatory fields in the application form are complete. If they are not, it will have to be returned. For the victims' payment, there is an eligibility assessment, so as long we have the adequate evidence at hand for that, we can pass it to the panel and have it assessed for eligibility and then on for the medical assessment. Once it comes back from the medical assessment, if any other evidence is required, we will have to get it. There may be some cases that could be turned around very quickly and others that take longer, depending on gaps in evidence. It is very hard to say, but, obviously, we will be endeavouring to deal with cases as efficiently and as quickly as we can.

Mr Beattie: Can I just jump on that? I am not sure whether I misheard you, so it is my mistake. Did you say the next financial year? If they apply in March, it will be a year before they receive payment. Did I mishear that?

Ms Brown: If we open for applications in March, it will be towards the end of that year before we see payments going out, so it could be in the second part of that financial year. I suggest that it might take six months. That is an assessment at the moment.

Of course, it has to be worked through. We were designated only in the last couple of weeks, and we are working through the processes in order to see what exactly needs to be put in place. At this stage, we do not have a board to engage with to make sure that it wants those processes as well. It will all be dependent on a lot of those things. It is incredibly difficult, and any dates that I have given are a complete guess and nothing more than that.

Mr Beattie: I appreciate that. I asked you for an assessment and said that I would not hold you to it, but that time frame shocked me slightly, if I am really honest with you. In managing the expectation of victims, if we are talking about rolling this out by the beginning of March, when will the cut-off point be when you will say, "We are not going to make that, so we will have to tell the victims that we have not made it"? It cannot be the end of February, because that would destroy them once again. Do you have a hard stop when you will say, "We are not going to make that deadline"?

Ms Brown: As you will appreciate, at this stage, we are in the initial stages of our project, but one of the things that we are looking at is a contingency in the event that the IT system is not ready to take applications in early March. We are looking at what we could put in place that would allow us to do that at that point. We are working through a number of contingency plans in order to manage that.

Mr Beattie: OK. That is fair. You can see the point that we are making. Victims were treated so badly previously when they were expecting something to happen in maybe two weeks, and then, at the last minute, they were told that it was not going to. I do not want that happen again in March next year, and that is why I raised it. You are alive to that issue, and we will not leave it to the last minute to say, "It cannot be delivered on time". Is that right?

Ms Brown: Absolutely. We are meeting the groups every fortnight, and we will keep them apprised of progress. If there are any issues, we will, of course, share those with them to let them know that the timeline could slip. We will do everything that we can to make sure that we are ready for the start of March.

Mr Bullick: To add to what Deborah said, we are working with TEO in order to bring in some independent assurance on how our project is progressing. We hope to have a project review, which will be an external assessment, prior to Christmas. That will be a good measure for us to assess how we are doing with deliverability so that we do not have too much optimism bias about how we are doing. It will certainly not stop us from moving on, but it will give us some extra assurance that we are on a trajectory for March and will allow us to take any corrective action at that stage. As Deborah said, we will keep the groups up to date.

Mr Beattie: Brilliant. I am glad. Thank you.

Moving on, even though this is roughly on the same theme. Linda raised some really good issues about assessments and how we will do them. I hope that there will be an intelligent assessment of individuals. With physical assessments in particular, if we just do a catch-all physical assessment, if, indeed, we do one, do we think that that is the right thing to do? For example, would the board expect Paul Gallagher, who was left in a wheelchair from the age of 22, having been shot by loyalist paramilitaries in 1994, to come in his wheelchair to prove that he is in a wheelchair, or will there be an intelligent assessment of victims?

Ms Brown: Those issues will be worked out in the process that we are trying to develop at the moment, and we will accommodate each individual and their personal circumstances. Paul, do you have anything more to add to that?

Mr Bullick: In the workshops, we meet the potential assessment provider. One of the things that we will look at is whether all assessments have to be done with a face-to-face meeting or whether they could be done on paper or remotely. Where there are cases that are very clear to the assessment panel, it may be able to work something out without putting the victim through any more distress.

Again, that is part of the work that we are carrying out. We have held two workshops to date and are due to meet the assessment provider again. That is ongoing. We will also engage with the sector. It will be heavily involved as we move through the process.

Mr Beattie: I am really appreciative. I know that it is very early days, but we are firing in points as well as getting stuff back from you, so we are raising issues that might appear again in three months' time. I am concerned when we use words like, "We can work something out". I have seen somebody having to go to an assessment in order to prove that he has no legs. I do not want that to be the case for this. That is why I am raising it. If I am really honest with you, I am not putting a shot across your bows, but I am making sure that you know that I am alive to that possibility.

I have rambled on enough, so I will not ask any more questions.

Ms Dillon: Chair, I have a tiny point on that issue.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): I want to bring in Sinéad and Rachel. I will take a list of people. We have to stop at 2.00 pm, but I want to be fair to every member. I will come back —.

Ms Dillon: I do not want to come in again; I just want to make a tiny point on that issue. I am not asking to come in again because the point is about the issue.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): That is OK.

Ms Dillon: You need to fire a shot across the bow of the medical assessment services that you are engaging with. If they are asking people like Paul Gallagher and others like him to come in, they are doing it because they are getting a fee for a face-to-face examination. Something needs to be put in place on that.

Ms S Bradley: I will be as quick as I can. I was reassured to hear about the sector view being taken into account. The more transparency there is in the building up of that process, the more robust it will be. Hearing the voice of the Committee and others will contribute to that.

I would love to get into a conversation about whether there is an appeal process and lots of the mechanics, but that is not timely at this juncture. I apologise for not being here for the start of the presentation, so this may have been referred to: once it was established that the Department of Justice would be taking on this role, I was relieved, but, at the back of my mind, there is a little bell going off about this being very out of step with anything that happens in that Department in its structures and what is in place. It is being built from scratch. Based on that, I wonder whether there has been any sort of scoping exercise where you look across other Departments to see whether expertise can be seconded during the formative stage of the process to make sure that, rather than you trying to learn from others, others step in and take a role in building it.

Ms Brown: We have on our project board experts internally in the Department, including experts on information management and data security issues etc. We also have a representative from NIJAC and from DFC to make sure that we are learning lessons from similar issues in those bodies.

Ms S Bradley: I am very aware that DFC routinely pays out and recognises the payments system. Is it going to be with you throughout the duration? I know that it is on the project board, but is it —?

Ms Brown: Yes. We have someone seconded into our implementation team. I will maybe let Paul say a little bit more about that.

Mr Bullick: Yes. Thank you —.

Ms S Bradley: Apologies; if that was covered, I am happy to move on.

Mr Bullick: Just very quickly, I will say that we have an expert in his field from the Department for Communities seconded to the project team. He is involved in the IT discovery stage at the moment along with some of our staff and the developer. I am also speaking with one of the directors in order to identify other sources from which we can bring people in at particular stages of the implementation of the project and scheme so that we have the right people in at the right stages. DFC is very accommodating and is working with us on that at the moment.

Ms S Bradley: That is reassuring to hear.

Miss Woods: Thank you for your answers so far. I will follow on from Linda and Doug's points about the medical assessment and the provider that you have been doing a workshop with. You might not be able to answer this, but was it a case of going to DFC and looking at who is doing the PIP processes at the moment? There are huge issues for people having medical assessments with PIP; I think that every single MLA will have had issues with that provider. There is an incredible lack of transparency as well between the Department for Communities and the current provider, and there have been calls from the previous PIP review — I fully expect it to be in the second one — to move the medical assessment process in-house. I would just like to share those concerns on that.

There is the outstanding issue of who is going to pay for all this. We can have all the processes in the world set up, but if there is no money to pay out, it will be a further kick in the teeth. Our papers say that there was a meeting to agree an approach with the First Minister, the deputy First Minister, the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Finance. Has a meeting been requested? You mentioned a bid going to Treasury. Is there a date for that despite the obvious issue that Treasury has said that it is not paying?

Finally, is the £2·5 million that you mentioned in this financial year only? You stated that that is enough, but is there an expectation of more money for processes and systems for the next financial year, and does the £2·5 million include the whole IT system and the wages for the project board?

Ms Brown: Working backwards, the £2·5 million is just for this year and is for the set-up costs and payment for the board members, once they are in place, for the remainder of the financial year. The estimation is that that is sufficient. Moving forward, as we said, the project will look at the administration requirements for the team to deliver those payments. That will inform the requirement unless it is all built into the business case that TEO is drafting, and the bid will be made in the spending review. The Minister agreed with the deputy First Minister, the First Minister and the Finance Minister to seek a meeting with the Secretary of State to try to secure some money directly from Treasury. We do not have a date for that, but we hope that it will be very soon.

On your point about the medical provider, we are aware of all the issues and are working our way through them to ensure that they are taken on board. We are aware that DFC is looking at bringing that in-house, but that will not happen quickly enough for this scheme, so we need to have something in place to have it ready to go at the start of March. I do not know whether David and Paul want to say any more.

Mr Bullick: TEO initiated the process with the medical assessment service. It kicked off the discussions. We picked those up in working with TEO. Unfortunately, there are not an awful lot of options for that service, but it is important that we learn as much as we can from the experiences of the past because that will allow us to help and work with the provider to make sure that we shape the service that we need to support the victims' payments board.

Miss Woods: On a point of clarification, you said that the proposed meeting with the Secretary of State was to try to secure "some money", but it is my understanding that Westminster should be paying for all this. Will you clarify that?

Ms Brown: We want to seek all the funding, but we also want to explore other options in the event that the full funding cannot be made available. The default position is that we will seek all the funding, because we know that, otherwise, it will end up falling to the Northern Ireland block grant and will have an impact on other critical services across the rest of the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS).

Miss Woods: Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that that was still the default position.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): There is a response from Robin Walker on behalf of the Secretary of State that we received just an hour ago on that issue repeating a similar line that the devolved settlement gives funding through Barnett to fulfil all the statutory obligations, including the funding of this scheme, but that the Secretary of State continues to engage with TEO and DOJ. So, there has been no change in that position. We will put that in the correspondence for Thursday's meeting, when members might want to pick up on it again.

Deborah, you are the SRO for this set-up project. Is that correct?

Ms Brown: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Are you satisfied that, as the senior responsible officer, you are getting access to all the relevant Departments and officials that you require in order to carry out your role?

Ms Brown: Yes, we have had good engagement with TEO, DFC has been very helpful and NIJAC has been engaging with us and trying to work with us to see how quickly we can take forward those appointments. There was a real commitment at the project board meeting that we held last week to make sure that we make as much progress as we can as quickly as possible to ensure that we meet the timescales.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Has the Department backfilled the different roles that you have had to relinquish, or have you taken this on in addition to everything else?

Ms Brown: We have brought in a few additional new staff and moved a couple of staff across from compensation services. We are backfilling those roles, and we hope to do that quite quickly. One of the risks in our risk register relates to staffing. In the NICS there are supply issues at some grades that will impact on us. We are very mindful of that. As I say, we have moved some people across from compensation services. In the current climate of COVID, there has been a little bit of a downturn in the activity of compensation services. We have not felt the impact of that yet, but it is something that we will keep under review.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Are there any other questions that members want to raise? There is a bit of time if members feel that there are more issues to cover. Linda?

Ms Dillon: I have one quick question. It may well be one more for the Minister, but, if you can give us any information, it will be appreciated. Are there any ongoing conversations or negotiations on the eligibility criteria, or rather, the ineligibility criteria?

Ms Brown: I am not aware of any. I just know what is in the regulations at present and the guidance that was issued by the Secretary of State on 14 August.

Ms Dillon: OK. That is grand. Thank you.

Mr Beattie: I have a quick question, if I may. We talked about getting the board appointed, going through that process with NIJAC and looking at its terms of reference and responsibilities. Bearing in mind that the board has to be trained into the role so that it is ready to go come March, do we have a rough time for when the board will be appointed?

Ms Brown: I fear that you have given me another date. [Laughter.]

Hopefully, that will be this side of Christmas. I will ask David to say a few words.

Mr Lennox: We are working through that process with NIJAC because we have to approve the terms and conditions. In the regulations that fall to us, as part of our responsibility, but NIJAC works through its processes. We are discussing with it how much we can squeeze that as best we possibly can. With a fair wind, we hope that we will have board members in place early in the new year — in January. That will allow us time to establish the board, make some decisions, get some sign-offs and have those people trained up.

We have not settled on a final time frame yet, but that is what we are aiming towards. However, we are going into October now, and we have to let the process run through.

Mr Beattie: That is a fair point. I think that they need to be in place and be table-topped through a few scenarios so that the board is ready to go come March, as opposed to being suddenly appointed in March and hit with what could be quite a complicated set of problems.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Deborah, has there been any work to identify the number of applications that may land on the board's desk in March? What is your capacity to process them? How many are you hoping to process per month?

Ms Brown: We are just in our initial stages of scoping this. All this will be dependent upon the assessment that comes in and the work that TEO is doing on the numbers. At the minute, we are trying to work up all those figures in order, as you say, to know how many people we need to administer the scheme and how many panel members we need to do the assessments etc. We have no figures on that as yet.

Mr Lennox: An expert has been engaged, and we are expecting them to come back with a range of figures, including lower and upper limits. At least that will give us some indication of where we need to go with a staffing complement to administer the scheme and, indeed, with the maximum number of board members that we need so that we can inform as and when we need them to sit on the panels.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): It has been incredibly helpful to have this engagement not just for me but for the Committee. Thank you. I am sure that this is an issue that we will revisit in the near future, and we will need regular updates from you. We appreciate Deborah and the team for the engagement.

Ms Brown: Thank you.